Tuesday 12 April 2011

Turn off Google Instant [Solved]

I hate google instant when using Firefox.  It steers away from my original search terms, and on flaky connections it is a pain in the arse.

The settings on google, to turn off instant are cookie based and depending on your browser settings, instant my be back on when you restart your browser.  So many people have complained on the web about this and still google have not done anything to help the people out.

Frequent complaints include:

  • Steering away from the users original search terms.
  • Network congestion from multiple call backs to google servers.
  • Halting of instant due to multiple call backs causing instant to freeze.
  • The ability to opt out of instant not sticking on browsers.

There have been a few solutions on the web so far, some which have temporally worked or not at all.  These include Firefox / Greasemonkey plugins.

Only one solution so far has seemed to work, i involves changing setting on browser and is not cookie or session based.  This solution will not follow you around but at least will disable instant on the computer you set it on, and it will stick.

Reference:  http://www.ehow.com/how_7190054_disable-instant-search-permanently-firefox.html

Press the "Ctrl" and letter "N" keys to open a new Firefox browser window. Type "About:Config" in the address bar. Press the "Enter" key.

Read the warning. Press the "I'll Be Careful, I Promise!" button.

Type "Firefox" in the blank field labeled "Filter."

Double-click on the following entry to open a dialog box: "general.useragent.extra.firefox."

Type "www.google.com" into the blank field. Click the "OK" button to close the dialog box. Exit out of the browser window.

Open a new Firefox browser session and navigate to Google's search engine page. Begin typing in search terms and notice no instant!

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